parabola

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. A plane curve formed by the intersection of a right circular cone and a plane parallel to an element of the cone or by the locus of points equidistant from a fixed line and a fixed point not on the line.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. The conic section formed by the intersection of a cone with a plane parallel to a tangent plane to the cone; the locus of points equidistant from a fixed point (the focus) and line (the directrix).

n. The explicit drawing of a parallel between two essentially dissimilar things, especially with a moral or didactic purpose. A parable.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. A kind of curve; one of the conic sections formed by the intersection of the surface of a cone with a plane parallel to one of its sides. It is a curve, any point of which is equally distant from a fixed point, called the focus, and a fixed straight line, called the directrix. See focus.

n. One of a group of curves defined by the equation y = axn where n is a positive whole number or a positive fraction. For the cubical parabola n = 3; for the semicubical parabola n = 3/2. See under cubical, and semicubical. The parabolas have infinite branches, but no rectilineal asymptotes.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. Same as parabole.

n. A curve commonly defined as the intersection of a cone with a Plane parallel with its side.

n. By extension, any algebraical curve, or branch of a curve, having the line at infinity as a real tangent.

n. a plane curve formed by the intersection of a right circular cone and a plane parallel to an element of the curve

Etymologies

New Latin, from Greek parabolē, comparison, application, parabola (from the relationship between the line joining the vertices of a conic and the line through its focus and parallel to its directrix), from paraballein, to compare; see parable.

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Claim someone shot out the indow of your Congressoinal office when it was really just a satellite office, happened at like 1 or 2 a.m., the trajectory of th ebullet meant the shooter was either wearing the baloonboy balloon and shooting from above or such a superb marksman he could aim a bullet's parabola from the ground while firing straight up, and IT WASN'T EVEN A WINDOW TO THE OFFICE SPACE YOU WERE RENTING, BUT A NEARBY WINDOW IN THE SAME BUILDING.

The former involves the conception of a circular directrix with a ratio equal to unity in all cases; and the two definitions become identical in the construction of the parabola, which is in fact the only curve of which a clear idea is given by either of them.